‘Messaging is the new social media’

‘What happened in 2014?’ Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist who was an early investor in Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare, asks himself this question and comes to 10 remarkable insights.

Wilson dropped a little ‘social’ bomb at the end of 2014 by stating the social media phase had ended and by adding messaging is the new social media. Wilson writes developers and entrepreneurs still build social apps that we still use, but there’s little innovation and left. “The big platforms are mature, their place is secure”, he finds.

Two remarkable insights that shook the social media community

1/ the social media phase of the Internet ended. this may have happened a few years ago actually but i felt it strongly this year. entrepreneurs and developers still build social applications. we still use them. but there isn’t much innovation here anymore. the big platforms are mature. their place is secure.

2/ messaging is the new social media. this may be part of what is going on in 1/. families use whatsapp groups instead of facebook. kids use snapchat instead of instagram. facebook’s acquisition of whatsapp in february of this year was the transaction that defined this trend.

Remarkable and predictable

If Wilson is right (and I think he is) the shift is as remarkable as predictable. Communications went from personal voice calls to SMS to social media and are now back on the point of personal messaging apps. Historically the curve is pretty similar. Researcher BI Intelligence supports Wilson’s statement. Worldwide around 2 billion people use messaging apps. The same number of people uses social media, but their growth is waning. The Facebook/WhatsApp acquisition is even more spectacular in this perspective.

Whatever the platform

Whatever the platform, messaging will remain popular. The core of this commonplace action – people communicating with close friends, relatives, family and co-workers – remains. And will remain for some time.

Start messaging!

is content marketer and makes sure our readers always have interesting blogs to read about how to engage with customers. During the day, she answers 1K questions in her role as communications advisor. At night she preferably sleeps.

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